The Cost of Relaxation: Vacation Pressure, Guilt, and the Financial Side of Travel – Episode #674

Do you need a vacation from your vacation? On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Taylor unpack the changing meaning of vacations, from the pressure to plan extravagant getaways to the financial strain and emotional guilt that often tag along. They share personal experiences, explore how technology interferes with true downtime, and highlight why intentional planning (and smart budgeting) is key to actually enjoying your time off. You can read Taylor’s full article about vacation planning here. Tune in to learn how to take a break that actually feels like one.

Related Readings

Do You Need A Vacation From Your Vacation?

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: . Welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m Matt, I’m here with Taylor, and today we are talking all about vacations. ’cause Taylor, it’s summer and I can’t think of anyone better to have on the show to talk vacations than the person who I think, travels more than anybody I know than, uh, than you. So do you wanna defend yourself or

Taylor Sutterfield: You know, I, here’s the thing is this was clearly Will for a long time. Like Will was

Matt Mulcock: A bit.

Taylor Sutterfield: In the lead for this and then he’s just gotten quieter about it and I feel like he’s just like riding my coattails and he just kind of hides behind me

Matt Mulcock: I think that’s probably true.

Taylor Sutterfield: Because we were talking about today and Will has missed five Fridays in a row, uh, for the last, you know, month and a half. So all I’m saying is it’s not just me.

Matt Mulcock: I think maybe you’re just, your, your timing is worse because you miss like the client only huddles. Like it’s more noticeable, the things that you miss. I think you and will both probably travel about the same, although, where are we at now with family reunions for you? Where, where are you at? How, how many do we have? How many, how many do we have a year?

Taylor Sutterfield: Well, just to give you a a sense into my life, I’m the sixth of eight and my wife’s the seventh of seven. And because my mom passed away when I was very little, I have three extended families. And there are 50 cousins. On my dad’s side, there are like 30 some odd cousins on my late mom’s side. And about, uh, just, just over 30 on my stepmom’s side and on my wife’s family, they now have 36 grandchildren.

Matt Mulcock: Whoa. That makes sense. This makes sense as to why you’re giving us some context and we, we joke, we like to give you crap, but it’s only ’cause we love you so much. And, this does come up in meetings a lot where it’s like, oh, Taylor, you’re gonna be gone again. Interesting. Uh, okay, cool. So we thought who we probably should have will on here as well, so we can give him some crap. But, so with all that said, we are talking vacations, a very pertinent topic for this time of year. Some of vacations going on. And to be fair, as the time of this recording, we do have to call me out as I’m giving you crap. I am leaving for a week, next week. and so I, I’m going for my, my annual Lake Powell trip with my family.

So I can’t give you too much crap. Uh, but we do wanna talk all vacation, all about vacations. And, and you wrote, uh, I’m gonna call this out right now. if you, if uh, you want to go read this and we’re gonna do A-T-L-D-R on this as well. But Taylor, you wrote a great article titled, do You Need a Vacation From Your Vacation? And, we figured this be great to just talk about something that. It comes up a lot for dentists. Comes up a lot. I know from in my client conversations around this topic and, and there’s a lot to this. So let’s just start with, I think you tell a, you kind of set this up perfectly. Let’s start with the, kind of, the way you set up this article, talking about your, your family situation growing up and you kind of, what vacations look like for you.

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah, so it’s interesting, you know, we’re gonna get into the meat of the article here soon, but I, I’m sure this has happened with you, Matt, where you start writing an article or you prepare for a webinar, or you’ve got a client meeting and you think it’s gonna go one way. But as you get into it. It takes a complete different VE than you were

Matt Mulcock: All the time.

Taylor Sutterfield: Right. And that really happened to me when I was writing and preparing for this article. It was, you know, we were kind of coming up, Hey Taylor, you’re gonna write an article in July about vacationing. And so I had a, you know, some thought on my head of what, what this article was gonna be. But as I was researching for this, I kind of stumbled across some really interesting data, which just hit home for me. And I just related to this and I’m sure, ’cause I’ve had so many conversations with clients that this is going to be very pertinent for a lot of our listeners out there. Right. So just to answer your question though, Matt, about my background, like vacation and taking time off has been like a really big part of my life since I was a little kid because my dad, he grew up on a potato farm in Idaho and he was the second oldest of six children.

Matt Mulcock: Is your dad named Reese Harper?

Taylor Sutterfield: No, but not, not to my knowledge. That would be a shock, but I wouldn’t mind him. Reese, he’s a great guy. Uh, yeah, so similar upbringing to Reese. Uh, and I think there’s some, you know, when you grow up on a farm, it just instills unique perspectives on life, right? But specifically with my, my dad, his, his father or my grandpa passed away when he was 10 of a heart attack. And so my grandma was left with six kids under the age of 12. And this is, I mean, decades and decades ago before women really worked right? And so they were just really, really poor and they didn’t have a lot of money. And it was a really, really hard upbringing. And my dad, when he talks about his father, he is like, I don’t have many memories of him. And all the memories I have of him of are, of him being gone and of him working right.

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Taylor Sutterfield: And so one big thing for his life was like, I don’t want my kids to not remember me. Like I want my kids to have many fond memories. And it’s been his mission, which, uh, just to give you guys a background, he was a personal injury attorney. He ran his own practice pretty similar to a lot of dentists out there where they’re kind of a small, may have either one producer or several producers together in a partnership. And he ran his own practice. And because of that, every time we had off for spring break or fall break, or anytime we had off from school, my dad made sure to schedule time off from work. And so every single fall break, spring break, as a kid, we were going somewhere, right? And like I said at the beginning, so I am the sixth of eight children. And just to give you even more peak grab, like my sad backstory, I feel like I’m like exposing a lot here. Uh,

Matt Mulcock: You didn’t know this was gonna go this way.

Taylor Sutterfield: I have no idea. But, uh, I think it’s pertinent. I think it’s pertinent to kind of describe all of this like feeling I have today, right? As an adult. But my mom passed away when I was little of cancer. And we had five kids. My dad had five kids with my mom and then he remarried when I was eight. To my stepmom, who’s amazing, wonderful lady, really love her and she had three kids. So together there was eight. So before you’re like eight kids, these people are crazy. It, it was a little bit unconventional, right? but anyways, he would take eight kids in this giant green maxi van. I dunno if you remember those Chevrolet Maxi Vans, but we had a 12 passenger green Chevrolet Maxi van.

And we would go to some local state park, or we would go to one of the many Utah national parks and we’d get out and we’d go do something together as a. And because of that, I have lots of men memories of my father, right. Which I’m incredibly grateful for. But to this day, I feel this pressure now that I need to get out and do things with my kids, and I need to create these memories. And I just feel pressure to travel. Right. And I don’t know if it’s internal, I don’t know if it’s external, but because of that, there’s just this overwhelming like feeling of I need to get out, I need to create memories. And when I don’t have something booked on the calendar, I get antsy and it’s like, when’s my next thing? Like I gotta have something. I gotta have something. So because of that, when I stumbled across this data that we’re gonna get into it, like just punched me in the face and it was like, this describes you to a t.

Matt Mulcock: I’m really glad you went into that, Taylor. It does give pertinent context for this article and for. Like again, we kid and we always joke around lovingly with Taylor and Will about you guys being like the, the, the travel guys at, at our office. but honestly, like, again, it, it is all jokes and, and I’ve told you this before, like I, I actually very much like have so much respect for it that you have that mindset.

’cause I think. Like traveling is work, especially with kids. It’s a lot of work. And so I love what you’re doing of like, the theme here that I think that I witnessed with you and Will specifically is the intention behind it. You don’t have to justify it to anybody. You’re like, this is what I want to spend my time, you know, uh, doing with my kids. And you have some backstory here and you’re living it out intentionally. And I know, obviously know you, so I know that you’ve been able to make trade-offs in other areas of your life. You’re like, although now it makes a lot more sense why you just got the green van. you’re trying to match the green van you grew up with.

I get it. Um, but like you’re making trade-offs in other areas of your life and you’re so financially responsible. I think intention is the key word here. I think this, your story in some form or fashion resonates with a lot of people. Specifically the word you used as pressure. And that’s what we want to, I think that’s gonna be part of what we talk about today, is the pressure. Sometimes people feel about not only vacationing, but like the type of vacation we need to have. And I think, again, we’ll get into this, like the expectations people have around like. Even defining what a vacation is, I think is, has changed drastically. I mean, when you mentioned the things that you did growing up, I don’t think any of it seemed super extravagant, camping, Goland Valley, things like that.

It’s just like we just gotta get out and go somewhere else and like be, be out in the world somewhere. That’s what you consider a vacation.

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and you know, just kind of jumping into things, if we go back and we look at the. The history of the US and what the definition of a vacation is. It truly 50 years ago was what you’re describing. You know, get in the car, drive an hour, go camping, right? Come home. You know, it might’ve been a weekend trip.

It was very short. It wasn’t, I mean, international travel was very rare, right? And if we look at it as a whole, based on this, the, the research that I did for this article, I found that on average people 50 years ago took a little bit less than one vacation or a year, right? So that would mean most people might take one vacation. Uh, but there were many families that weren’t even taking a single vacation every year,

Matt Mulcock: And, and what do we define as a vacation? Like Taylor, I wanna ask you truly how many people and maybe this, and then including you. We did this on Facebook a while back on our Facebook group, like I think last year or the year before, asking people to define a vacation. But how many people would you say today would describe a weekend camping trip or like a four, let’s say four days, whatever you’re, you’re a long weekend, couple hours away in a car on or camping. How many people do you think would define that as a vacation today?

Taylor Sutterfield: I think it depends on when you were born, right?

Matt Mulcock: So, but I’m saying to, to like, let’s say someone with, like, someone our age in their late thirties, early forties

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah, and that’s where I would say that that quote unquote millennial, I don’t think they would qualify that as a vacation. Right. I think. Baby Boomer, gen Y, right? Like, they may classify that as a vacationer, but I think, um, us millennials, you and I, Matt, uh, you being much on the older end of that and me being on the far younger end,

Matt Mulcock: Very true. Very

Taylor Sutterfield: I, I think that a vacation nowadays is like, take a week off from work and fly somewhere. I almost feel like a flight is like the determining factor for a lot of millennials. And if you drive somewhere, it’s like, oh, that’s just a weekend getaway. That’s not a vacation.

Matt Mulcock: Totally. So the reason I think I, I totally agree with you, and I think We highlight this, or I wanted to highlight that specifically as we get into this data, because in the 1970s, people average less than one vacation. I wonder actually if they defined this in the study, but um, people back then would describe that, like, I think it’s very possible that people in the seventies said, oh yeah, we go camping. Like once a year, and that’s a vacation, and then this, you know, now it’s far greater and the definition has gotten more stringent of what a vacation actually is. So I think the gap’s even wider than we, than even the data shows from 50 years ago.

Taylor Sutterfield: And, and this data, just to prove that point, Matt, it talked about how the definition of a vacation has changed, and it did go from a short weekend drive to now domestic flights and international travel. And the biggest thing that shows this data is if we adjust for inflation, people were spending about so when I say people, I say Americans, right? So the US as a whole spend about 150 to 180 billion a year, which that’s an adjusted for inflation number, right? And today people spend about 1.3 trillion on vacations, right? So that number adjusted for inflation is an eight. X increase, right? So people spend eight times as much as they did. Right. And to put that in context, I don’t think we mentioned, but the number of vacations has gone from just under one a year for the average American to over three a year. So obviously if you’re taking more vacations, you’re gonna spend more. But vacations have gone, you know, we take them three times more than we did 50 years ago, but we spend eight times more than we did, which means we’re flying, we’re spending more time, we’re in the hotel, we’re not in the camp site. You know, we’re spending more. And the definition of a vacation has shifted over those time, over that time period.

Matt Mulcock: Totally. By the way, we need, we’d be remiss if we didn’t give the full context here in the article. You break down, first of all, you’re coming up on 10 years of marriage this fall. Huge congrats to that, but you actually do a breakdown of kind of like your world traveling. so as we talk about vaca, I, I really do think this is cool, like breakdown kind of the places you’ve been over your 10 years of marriage to emphasize how you’ve made this a priority in your life.

Taylor Sutterfield: Well, I’m already like feeling vacation guilt as we talk about this, uh, because in this like breakdown of my vacations, I do not include any of the many weekend getaways to St. George Park City Capital Reef Science. ’cause I still take those. Right. But they don’t qualify as a vacation under my new definition.

Right. But no, I, I’ve been really fortunate. I, you know, I mean, maybe Matt might say this is unfortunate, but we’ve been to Disney eight times in 10 years.

Matt Mulcock: I don’t know if I’d call that fortunate, but it’s a thing. It’s there, you’ve done it.

Taylor Sutterfield: Uh, so my daughter, she just turned seven and she has been to Disney on average at least once every year of her life. Right.

Matt Mulcock: Remembers two of them, so that’s great. Good for her.

Taylor Sutterfield: Uh, but I remember all of them, Matt. I remember all of them.

Matt Mulcock: You do.

Taylor Sutterfield: So, but we’ve, we’ve been able to go to Hawaii multiple times. Boston, Cancun. We’ve done South Carolina, Arkansas. We’ve just recently got back from the Philippines. We did four countries in Europe. We did a cross country road trip from Utah all the way to the Finger Lakes in New York. And we did, uh, Niagara Falls all on a big, giant road trip.

Matt Mulcock: Super cool.

Taylor Sutterfield: So it’s, it’s been a big priority in my life and we’ve spent a lot of time and resources, uh, to make it a priority. But, it’s come with some trade-offs. Right. Uh, and honestly, this is where I, selfishly, the reason for this article came up from an idea I had. Because in talking with hundreds of dentists every year when I’m going through their spending, right, one of the biggest things that causes people to overspend. Is vacationing, right? And so I was like, I’m gonna show these guys. I’m gonna go through and I’m gonna break down, like, Hey, there’s a more affordable way to vacation and, you know, here’s some numbers and let’s prove it. And then my article went completely a different way

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep.

Taylor Sutterfield: For the better, right?

Matt Mulcock: Sure.

Taylor Sutterfield: But, uh, yeah, I mean, we, we love it. It’s been a very big priority for my little family and, and we like to get out and do things. And, unfortunately though, it comes with some drawbacks and, which really, I, I think most of our listeners are gonna relate in some form or fashion to some of these feelings that you might also have when you get out and vacation.

Matt Mulcock: Totally. Totally. And I’m gonna come back to one point you just made there of that when we talk about spending vacation’s, usually a pretty big category for people. I also think, Taylor, tell me if you, uh, agree or disagree with this, with your experience with with clients. But I also think it’s one of the main categories where people. Either consciously or unconsciously, like don’t want to lump it in with all their spending. It’s like, like we spent, you know, like we show ’em the spending and then they’re like, wait, that seems off. And it’s like, well we, we, we only spend 12 grand a month or whatever the number is. And we’re like, oh yeah, but like you also took these three vacations last year that were $30,000.

And so you actually spend $15,000 a month. Like it’s the one category I think people. Again, understandably so. I think just the mechanics of the vacations only happen let’s say once every quarter or whatever it may be. So it’s harder to track. But I also think it’s the one thing that people just like don’t want to factor in to their regular spending. It’s like kind of in a whole other category. It’s like Amazon and vacations seem to have their own category for people.

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah, well.

Matt Mulcock: Would you say you’ve experienced that too?

Taylor Sutterfield: A hundred percent. And I think there’s several reasons for that. I think naturally we all like to believe that we spend less than we do, right? And this is not unique to dentists, right? On average, people under represent their spending by about 30% when you ask ’em what they spend versus when you actually physically go in and see truly what they’re spending, right? But I also just think it’s hard, it’s hard to quantify that most people don’t really pay attention to what they’re spending on vacation. It’s kind of their cheat day, quote unquote. If you’re comparing this to a diet, it’s, we’re gonna splurge because we only have so much time and we wanna live it up. And so we spend a lot and we, we know we spend a lot, so we just kind of wanna close our eyes and not look at it

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Taylor Sutterfield: Right.

Matt Mulcock: Not to mention we, we like to categorize pretty much everything nowadays. Any indulgence or excess, anything we have is just, it’s self-care. Everything’s just self-care now. And that’s a whole other topic.

Taylor Sutterfield: But I, I think to your point Matt, like it’s really important to include it because if there is one thing, like a lot of people, when we’re talking about their spending and we’re talking about their future lifestyle, you know, people will say like, oh, but what, you know, right now I have kids at home and there’s daycare costs and there’s travel sports teams, and when the kids move out, when I’m retired, I’m not gonna have any of those expenses. Right? But this category of your spending travel specifically is gonna be one of those categories that makes up for all of those other expenses that you cut out. Right? Because the biggest thing right now that’s preventing people from traveling is just time. Right? It’s, they are at their practice. They can only take so much time off.

And if you do step away from work. Whatever you spend on travel now, it’s going to increase. You’re gonna have a pent up demand to want to get out and do more, and you will spend more and it’s going to replace all that spending. And if we don’t factor it in to your spending and what we need to replace, we’re doing you a massive disservice for your.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. It’s so true. More time means more spending. That is like, that is just how we see this time and time and time again. this is a whole other topic, but, uh, just I think it’s worth saying here, th this is actually an underrated part of when you have a dual income household, and then one of the partners decides, you know, you decide as a family that that one person will no longer work.

It’s actually oftentimes. Two things you have to factor in. People always factor in the loss of income. One thing that people don’t often think about is the added spending with that person that’s no longer working, having more time, not even just traveling. It just you. When we live in a world, especially in America, that everything’s, the entire ecosystem we live in is about getting you to spend more money. When you have more time in that world and less focus on work, you’re gonna spend more money. This is just how it goes.

Taylor Sutterfield: Mass. This, this podcast is just to take shots at me and my, my situation

Matt Mulcock: I was not taking shots at you. I swear

Taylor Sutterfield: Shelby is, uh, Shelby is planning to step away from work in December. So we are about to be in that demographic of two incomes to one.

Matt Mulcock: You’re getting hit from every angle here. My guy. Yeah.

Taylor Sutterfield: So what do we learn? Taylor? You travel too much and you’re about to spend more money ’cause your,

Matt Mulcock: And you’re about to go broke. Yeah,

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. So let’s, let’s get into this trade off. You mentioned Taylor, um, and you’ve mentioned a couple of things here that I think. I want to, I think this is, uh, worth spending some time on. You talked about earlier the pressure you have felt in your life for better or for worse, um, to take these trips and have something on the calendar. I think part of this is personality driven. I think part of this, again, you mentioned. Your experience growing up, but then you also mentioned your, you used the word vacation guilt, and there’s actually, I had actually I mean, I know what those words intuitively mean, but I’d never heard of this as like a phenomenon that people actually have this talk about the de the data you were able to gather for this study and what vacation guilt and this pressure people feel,

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah, you, you and me both. You and me both. Matt, like I have never heard this term. before. Right. But it sounds self-explanatory and when you think about it, it’s like, yeah, I, I definitely understand this, right? But over the last 10 to 15 years, there’s been this phenomenon that has now been named and studied vacation guilt, right? And I just wanna like read this verbatim,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Please.

Taylor Sutterfield: If I try and explain it, but it’s vacation. Guilt is the feeling of anxiety, shame, or unease. People experience when they take time off for work, especially for leisure, right? It’s a psychological and cultural phenomenon where individuals feel they are either letting their team or employer down, falling behind on responsibilities, appearing lazier and committed, or being judged by peers or managers for taking a break.

Matt Mulcock: So interesting. Yeah.

Taylor Sutterfield: And, you know, we joke about it, but it’s like, and, and I don’t actually feel this from dentist advisors or from you, but at the team, I honestly feel that last lasted a lot. Being the butt of a joke where it’s like, oh, you take a lot of time off. It’s like it does wear on you over time.

Matt Mulcock: We’re gonna have a therapy session here. We’re gonna reconcile this ’cause I’m the leader of the, of those jokes and I’m, we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk this out, live on

Taylor Sutterfield: Being judged by peers or managers for taking a break really hits home.

Matt Mulcock: I’m sorry. You’re right. We are, we’re having a, we’re having an intervention right here with me with how much crap I give you. Just so you know, for the record, it purely is born out of jealousy. Literally. It’s a, it’s a me problem. It’s not a you problem. I truly is. ’cause

Taylor Sutterfield: I, I, I.

Matt Mulcock: This one hits home for me.

Taylor Sutterfield: Well, and I joke about it ’cause like, I, I, it’s not a real pressure, but it’s, it’s something that I create internally and I think that’s what most of this is, right? Um, that’s most anxiety and shame is, is people create this, they have expectations of what they think people feel about them and they self create this. And I, again, this, this article is not meant to be written for myself, but it almost feels like that’s what happens whenever you write content. It’s like, this is helpful for me. So I hope it’s helpful for someone else. But I’ve really found this, and I’m sure you have with with your clients as well, Matt, like, have you ever experienced clients that it, like when they were talking about a trip, that they kind of express these feelings when they’re about to go on that trip?

Matt Mulcock: Totally. All the time. Or that they wanna take a trip and they can’t. They say they can’t, not because they can’t afford it, but because of feelings like this all the time. Hear this a lot.

Taylor Sutterfield: Well, and this even heightens if you’re a practice owner, right? Like that feeling of letting your team down or falling behind is huge for clients. It’s like, well, if I’m not there to produce, then who’s there to produce? And the firm’s losing money and I gotta make sure I’m paying everyone, you know, keeping the lights on and making payroll and, and you know, I employ all these people. It’s a lot of pressure, right? It’s a lot of pressure to take that time off and go and enjoy yourself when you have all of this guilt running around in your head.

Matt Mulcock: Totally. Yeah. It’s funny that you say this, Taylor, ’cause growing up for me, um, speaking of like context of how you, how we get to how we are, like I remember my dad’s self-employed as well, like yours in real estate, but sole producer and then he ran his own company for, for a long time, but. then it got to a place where he was just literally, it was like sole producer. Like if he didn’t work, he didn’t make money. And so he had, he had this. Way back then, I remember we would be going on our, we, I’ve been growing up going to Lake Powell my whole life. And uh, I remember for our like annual, or sometimes we’d go twice a summer, but we’d go get ready for our trip. My dad would literally work until the final, like we’d get everything ready, we’d pack everything with my mom, get the car ready to go, be like waiting for him to come home because he felt so guilty and like so, such a workaholic. That he would like work to the final minutes of that day to get as much production out as he could so he could at least relax somewhat on the trip. And we were going for like, you know, a long weekend we’d, he’d maybe miss like two days of work. So that’s been bred into me where I struggle. Like, again, like all jokes aside, I I, I truly do give you crap.

And, and I’m after this podcast, I’m gonna stop now or limit it. But it is, it, it truly is it a manifestation of, like me wishing I wasn’t the way I was, which is like, I, I want to travel more. I want to make it more of a priority. I think it’s like the best investment you truly can make with those you love. And sometimes I catch myself being like, but I gotta work. I gotta go do this. And like, so I, I very much fall into the vacation guilt camp. Far, like really much worse because I don’t even feel guilty on trips. I just don’t take ’em. And then I feel guilty about not taking ’em. So it, it’s a, I think a lot of people resonate with this

Taylor Sutterfield: Well, it’s not just you like the, and this happens with our clients. I mean, what you described is like our clients to a T. It’s like they work and then they feel that pressure of like, not only does this vacation cost me tens of thousands of dollars, but it’s also the cost of not earning that money while I’m out. So it’s the cost of the vacation and it’s the cost of the loss of

Matt Mulcock: Producing.

Taylor Sutterfield: And so it, it gives this feeling of like, this vacation was twice as expensive of what it was on paper.

Matt Mulcock: Yep, totally.

Taylor Sutterfield: Again, just it’s not unique to Dennis. Like if we look at the, the numbers from this, um, I

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, this study,

Taylor Sutterfield: I’m gonna butcher this guy’s last name. M Chin

Matt Mulcock: MM Chan. Mav Chan agency. Yeah.

Taylor Sutterfield: I, yeah. So more than half of people admit that they work on vacation and then 47% of people feel guilty for not working. So if you look at that number, it’s like, well, a little 54% people work on vacation and then 47 feel guilty for not working. So a hundred percent of people are thinking about work on vacation.

Matt Mulcock: Hundred percent of people basically are Yeah. Are basically in some form or fashion held back by work on their vacation

Taylor Sutterfield: Yeah. Well, and, and

Matt Mulcock: Being present on it.

Taylor Sutterfield: You said specifically Matt, like it was. In the hopes, like he would work up until the minute that you left on vacation so that he would have a couple days to relax and then get back straight to work. But this was, I mean, I don’t want to age you here, Matt, but when, what, what year were these trips happening?

Matt Mulcock: Oh, so I, uh, these were like all, I grew up in the, you know, I was born in late eighties, grew up all through the nineties, and you know, these vacations were like throughout the nineties and like early two thousands.

Taylor Sutterfield: So was this pre or post cell phone? Internet

Matt Mulcock: Oh

Taylor Sutterfield: Smartphones.

Matt Mulcock: My, my core memories of this were, were mainly pre-cellphone and certainly pre smartphones for sure. I mean, again, I’ve been traveling like pal every year my whole life, but, but like the core memories of like what I was describing earlier, my dad doing this was certainly pre smartphone. No question

Taylor Sutterfield: Right. Which this is something that we have to deal with nowadays that our parents didn’t have to. Yeah. And this has just changed so much for our generation, right? We have to deal now with modern technology, right? For better or worse. And access to smartphones has just made it so that work. Really never leaves, right? Like if we wanted to, we can be constantly working. Even if we have physically left work, we can be answering emails, we can be serving the internet, we can be doing so many things for work. And because of this, in the same study, it found that 86% of people receive relaxation disrupting calls or messages from colleagues while on vacation, right? And Matt, I’m sure you feel this more than anybody else, right? Even if you are taking time off, someone needs, someone wants something from you as the main decision maker, like there’s just a lot riding on you and our listeners are gonna relate to that, right?

If they take time off from the office, even if their hygiene team and their assistants and or people are still working, they need to know from the boss what’s going on. And so it’s really, really hard to actually relax and get that rest that you need while you’re taking that vacation. 100%. All right. And it’s, and I don’t even think like, like I think when our colleagues message us when we’re on vacation, it’s not that they want us to respond, right? Then it’s more often than not. Like, I need this from Matt. When he gets back, I’m thinking about it now I’m gonna shoot off a message and I hope he doesn’t look at it.

Right. But it’s so hard not to, right? But when you have those notifications and they come through, like, I experienced this just every single day with clients, like, I work a certain timeframe and then, you know, clients are off. After they’ve been in the chair all day and then they email me at nights. And it’s really hard to not get that notification and want to respond right then and there.

Right. And I’ve tried my hardest to not respond at nights because it’s like I, I have to unplug and be present with my family at some time, right? But then there’s that like guilt of like, but my client just responded and I need to get to him and I need to respond. And it’s that constant battle. And it’s that that happens every day for a couple hours.

When you take a week off for a trip, it just compounds and compounds and you feel that stress.

Yeah. 59% of people struggle to switch off from work while on vacation, which completely related. 63% of people feel anxious if they don’t check their work related messages. So if you make the decision, you’re not gonna check, you’re just gonna be anxious the whole time that you don’t. Right. And then the, the biggest one here, I think, which is like the, the one that like hit home the most was the same study found that 70% of people have experienced mental health issues due to overworking.

Right. And that’s just like, if we go back to the top of 50 years ago, Americans were taking less than one vacation. Now Americans are taking three times the amount of vacations than they ever were. We’re spending eight times the amount of money on vacations. I personally believe that the point of a vacation is to unplug, is to relax, is to create those memories and do something outside of work.

Right? But even though we’re doing more vacationing than we ever have, we’re not getting any of the benefits from those extra vacations, right? If, if anything were way worse off than we were 50 years ago. We are, 70% of people say that they’ve experienced mental health issues due to overworking, right? And I don’t know what the solution is. You know, maybe we all need to go to Lake Powell and not have any service. And that’s, that’s the only,

Well, and this is, this was the main purpose of the article when I first started this was just like, what are the stats about Americans affording vacations and going into debt and all of these things? And it was kind of shocking that 74% of Americans have gone into debt to cover the costs of a vacation.

That’s three of every four Americans that go on vacation are financing it with some form of debt. Right. That’s staggering. Right. Uh, so just to kind of keep going through this, the average debt being more than 1130% charged more than 5,000 to their credit cards. Right. And this isn’t just like putting the vacation on the credit card and paying it off that month.

It’s like revolving credit card debt that they can’t pay off. Right. Yeah. 55% of respondents don’t account for vacation spending in their annual budgets. We talked about that. I’d say it’s even higher in my anecdotal experience. Yeah. And 66% admit spending more on a weekly vacation than they do in rent. So, you know, a lot of times now you spend more on a week long vacation than you do in rent.

And I don’t think that’s shocking. I think people will be like, yeah, no, duh. You know, when you look at our clients, you know, a lot of our clients will drop 10, 20,000 on a week vacation. Right. And a lot of ’em have a 5,000 to 7,000 a month mortgage. Right?

Right. So again, Americans are taking more vacation, they’re spending more on those vacations, and they’re getting less from those vacations than ever before. Right, and what I was gonna say and, and that vacation guilt is as strong as ever, right? Just there’s that pressure to take the vacation and then if you have the pressure to take the vacation, but you don’t have the money to do so, it just compounds on top of it.

And you feeling the guilt of the, how am I gonna pay for this vacation after the fact as well.

Yeah, I can yell at my kids. That’s okay.

100%. Yeah, I won’t a hundred percent. I, I. And it’s hard to quantify this. This is like just people have to be real with themselves and, and contemplate like, what are my motivations here? What am I doing? And, and you have to have an honors conversation, right? Uh, but you, you see this all the time. Like, for example, funny enough, you know, I’m on a plane in December to Disney World with my little family and just the way that it works out, we’re on Southwest.

Shout out to all you Southwest fans out there. Uh, uh, they don’t have assigned seatings, but they have fam what’s called family boarding. And so after like the first a-list, people get to choose their seats, then they let families choose their seats so they could stay together. And what naturally happens is the families tend to go to the back of the airplanes to try and, like, we wanna all be together, but we don’t want to bother everybody else in the front of the plane, right?

Yes, it is not a written rule, but it is funny. You’ll see it every single time. And everyone that flies Southwest and has a family knows exactly what I’m talking about. Unwritten rules where you go to the back of the plane with your family, right? Uh, a 100%, right? Like if you’re there with your little, like 18 month old, it’s gonna cry part way through the flying, and you’re sitting next to the A-listers, it’s gonna like, yes.

It’s like, are you kidding me? But a, anyways, the way that my family works is we have me, my wife, and then we have three little kids, but Cal is under the age, uh, of two, so he’s a lap sitter. So because there’s four of us, we can’t all, like, we, we can’t all be on the same side, same row, so we have to go three and one.

So it just worked out that my wife and my kids were on. That three. And then I was on across the aisle by one and I was sitting next to another family, uh, where it was the dad and his son, and then his wife and the other kids were behind him. And we started chatting and I come to find out that he’s an oral surgeon and I was just like, this is so random.

Out of all the places I’m a dental specific financial advisor, I, and I was like, I hesitate to even tell him what I did for a living. ’cause I was like, the last thing I want this guy to have to worry about is like some financial advisor that’s gonna pitch him because he works with dentist advisor. Right.

But it was funny ’cause he like was asking, I was like, yeah, I’m a financial advisor. And he’s like, oh, like where do you practice? What do you do? Who do you work with? And I was like, I actually work for dentist advisors, but like, I promise I don’t wanna, I’m on vacation. Like, you don’t, let’s not talk. But he was just like, once he found out I was a financial advisor, which happens all the time, he just wanted to pick my brain and ask me a million questions.

Right. Yeah. But anyways, uh, what happened is he was like, okay, so where are you staying at Disney World? And I was like, I’m staying at a super ghetto cheap RCI, right? But I didn’t wanna tell him that. I was like, oh, I’m just staying, you know, off property. He’s like, okay, yeah, I’m just barely off property, right?

And uh, he was like, oh, we’re staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. And again, you’re not a Disney person, Matt, so that means nothing to you. But this is the animal. Kingdom Lodge is right on the Kilimanjaro Safari, which ride, which if you don’t know, it’s basically they’ve taken an African safari and created this at Disney.

They have live tigers, elephants, giraffes, antelope. Like my dad has been to South Africa and done an African safari. And he is like, the Kilimanjaro Safari at Disney World is like better because the animals are where they’re supposed to be and you get to see them. And it doesn’t make our to just, yes. Yes, 100%.

But anyways, this lodge is backed up against that. And so the entire lodge, you, you walk outside on your balcony and it’s giraffes and antelopes and elephants and like you just have these amazing views, but because of that, it’s 3000 bucks a night, right? Stay in the suite. Whereas I’m staying at this ghetto seventies RCI unit that’s $700 for the week, right?

And so I’m just doing the math and I’m like, golly, your week long vacation is 21,000 just to stay at the resort. And I’m paying 700 for the week. And he’s gonna have amazing views. But we’re both going to Disney World with our young families and we’re gonna have 85 to 90% of the same experience at complete different price ranges.

And the main reason is. Again, I don’t, maybe this wasn’t his motivation. Maybe he truly wanted to see giraffes when we woke up, but that main reason is so that you can post on Instagram and say, Hey, I stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, and look at all these awesome pictures.

Yeah.

Yep. He can. He told me all about his financial situation, so I know he could.

Yeah. Well, and and it’s great. It’s a great point Matt. And even like, more specifically when we’re talk, you know, when I was thinking like, well. What’s the solution like? How do you do better here? Like we’re financial advisors, so you can guess that we’re gonna save the solution is to have better finances, but I truly believe this wholeheartedly, like if you have a healthy emergency fund and a healthy savings rate, right?

When you take that vacation, you don’t have to stress as much about the missed production back at the office. You don’t have to stress about how am I gonna pay for this? And it’s okay if you wanna splurge a little bit in those nice areas. But what I would say is, if you don’t have a healthy emergency fund, if you don’t have a healthy savings rate, if your cashflow is not where it needs to be, you should not be staying at the Animal Kingdom launch, right?

And you still should be able to take vacations and make memories with your family even if you’re not at a place. Where you know you have that six month emergency fund and two months of operating expenses, the practices, and have a 20% savings rate. Like I’m not saying you have to achieve every single one of those benchmarks to take a vacation, but what I am saying, and what will be better for you is if you can have the vacation saved up for in advance, that’s going to be huge, right?

If you don’t finance it for the credit card, you are going to be able to rest and relax during that vacation way more than you would be otherwise.

This guy right here.

Uh, it was funny enough, our first Disney World Day was in Animal Kingdom, so I was like, shit. You know, and there’s that, that guilt is like a provider. You’re like, man, am I not doing enough for my family? And but then I had to come to myself and be like, I’m taking my seven and 4-year-old to Disney world, right?

Like, these kids can stay at a $700 a week, you know, junkie, RCI, and be just fine. Right? But it did, it stung at first, and it was like, man, what am I doing? What bad decisions did I make in life that I couldn’t afford the animal Kingdom Lodge? And I know, you know, financially speaking, I, I, I have all this background and all of this education, all this training, and I still felt it, right?

It’s the most common feeling in the world to feel that way. So if you felt it or you’re honest with yourself and you’re like, yeah, there is a little bit of that in my vacation planning where it’s like. And it’s going back to smartphones and social media, like it’s more prevalent than ever. We can see what the celebrities are doing and staying, and we can see what TripAdvisor ranks as the top 10 best destinations and the under the radar spots to hit.

And all of the Instagram influencers, like where they choose to stay, like it’s so easy to find those things and wanna replicate ’em, right? So that pressure has never been greater, right? And you’re going to feel it. But I think what has to come back to is like we, the, the whole purpose of this podcast and what we try to do here at Dentist Advisors is help dentists make smart financial decisions, right?

And if you want to make that smart financial decision, you have to keep yourself in check and say, have I saved enough for this vacation? And if I haven’t, are there trade-offs that I could make to still have 85, 90 5% of. Experience with my family without having the accompanying vacation guilt that comes from, I can’t afford this, I’m missing time at the office.

I’ve got all these emails, and so you spend the money, don’t get any of the benefits, and it’s just shame, guilt, anxiety that comes from it.

100%. If you want to get the actual benefit in today’s environment, if you want to get that rest and relaxation, it’s gonna, it’s gonna come from intention, right? You have to intentionally be ready for it financially. You have to intentionally unplug from work, intentionally choose to ignore all of the messages and choose to disconnect, uh, and for what it’s worth, right?

If, you know, as I was reflecting and going through this, I’ve been to a lot of really cool places, but my favorite place in the place I’m most nostalgic for. Even today as an adult is that little state park that I used to go to with my family growing up, right? And those are my fondest memories. And so if you’re thinking like, well, I need to give my kids this experience and take ’em here and do this, like there’s a big chance that it’s more your own insecurities that you’re trying to fulfill, then, then your kids actually need, right?

More often than not, what they need is you and they need your time. And I love, I mean, Matt, you just spoke about this recently at our summit, but I loved your story about you and your daughter and and your son and just taking that little camping trip. And I guarantee, I mean, I, I’ll let you fill in the, the details, but I guarantee you that they’re gonna remember that more than anything else.

Okay. But you know, again, we love to travel. We love vacations. This podcast, the, the purpose here is not to say, Hey, don’t take vacations and don’t spend any money. It’s just, again, be intentional and, and think about why you’re taking it and who you’re taking it with and the purpose behind it. And if you do that.

You know, nine times outta 10 you’ll realize that you can accomplish what you wanna accomplish right at at a fraction of the price, right? Or you can at least do it with an intention of not looking at your phone, not checking those messages, and you’ll have such a better time than if you hadn’t taken that 15 minutes, half hour to really sit down and think about these things.

Yeah.

Keywords: vacation, family, financial planning, vacation guilt, travel, modern vacations, spending, intentionality, mental health, technology

Behavioral Finance, Work Life Balance